It’s been a while since I have complained about facebook.
I’ve been saying for a while now that facebook is one of the main downfalls of our society. Well now, I say that facebook is singlehandedly the downfall of our society.
There used to be games where you can live vicariously within a computer. They started out harmless and small, and were originally aimed as creative children’s games. Examples of this are games like Sim City. You got to create your own towns and watch as they either grow or falter based on how well you establish and run it. Then those games started to progress. You were able to create your own character, and begin to run their life. You get a job, you buy a house, and… you have sex.
This wasn’t a children’s game anymore.
But even I remember playing that game in my younger years. It was fun. But then, that’s when things started to advance even further. Next, that Second Life bullshit came out. I still don’t even know exactly what that is. But you create your own character, usually some type of variation of yourself (or rather, how you really wish you were…), and you literally enter a world with other characters that were created by other people. And it’s just like a normal life. Basically, it’s meant for people that suck at running their own life and have to create another one over the computer. This is where things got really sketchy. You met other characters, but you don’t know who they really are. Could be a 50 year old fat man from Brooklyn posing as an 18 year old Miami chick. Who the fuck knows? Well, Chris Matthews might.
That’s essentially what facebook has become! Except this time, you’re not creating a fake alias. You are exactly who you are, but the internet version. Everything you do over the internet is now confined into one place. Soon enough you won’t need to ever visit another site.
The best way to put is this: it is an extension of your life. You don’t live vicariously through it anymore, You just live it, period. You know how you act differently depending on what set of people you’re around? Maybe you act one way with your family, another way with your friends, and another way with your acquantances/people you just met, etc. Well now, people act a certain way on facebook. So there’s your actual self, and then there’s your facebook self.
And you gotta maintain your facebook rep. Someone makes fun of you on your wall? X that shit out before any one sees it. And god forbid a girl saw it, she’d never talk to you again! If you ain’t cool on facebook, you ain’t cool in general. That’s how it is.
Well, I handle it the opposite away. Because I’m not insecure. I know who I am, and if people don’t like me, then fuck em. I’m not the slightest bit worried that anything I ever say or do on facebook is going to affect my actual life in any way, shape or form. In fact, I try to embarrass myself on facebook as much as I can. I don’t take it seriously, and it’s funny as hell. I hate everything that facebook represents, but if it’s there, might as well take advantage of it.
I’m not even gonna bother talking about all the pointless, stupid, mundane statuses that people put on a daily basis. That comes with the territory. People are self-deprecating, they’re attention whores, they’re annoying… it’s always been that way. Facebook just brings it to light.
The main concern I have is the reliance that some people have on facebook. You may have thought I was kidding before, but there are actually people out there that consider their facebook page a large part of their own personal representation. What I mean by that is: People are starting to believe that what occurs on their facebook walls is what defines them (their “facebook rep”), as opposed to what they do in real life (their actions, their words, etc.). I know at least a couple of people that think that. And THAT is scary. But again, those are mainly people that suck at real life and think that they could be cooler on facebook than they are in reality. But at the end of the day… what does that accomplish?
Wow, you have 643 facebook friends! But how many of them are really your friends? I’d take 10 true, real-life friends that genuinely care about me any day over 1,000 facebook friends.
As for me, I prefer reality. It may be a bitch sometimes, but… it’s real.